Because we just had New York Governor David Paterson confirm that he let his people loose to smear Carolyn Kennedy, to the New York Times, no less:

For the first time, Gov. David A. Paterson acknowledged Friday that he personally ordered his staff to contest Caroline Kennedy’s version of events in the hours after she withdrew from consideration to be United States senator.

However, Mr. Paterson said that he was bewildered when his staffers subsequently unleashed harsh personal attacks against Ms. Kennedy, saying he merely wanted them to challenge the assertion from Ms. Kennedy’s camp that she had been his first choice to replace Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Let me be the first to say to you that you are lying through your teeth.

You could have picked up the phone, and talked to any paper on the record, and it would have ended this, but you leaked it via your staff, and considering what your staff said, through staffers who were clearly given marching orders to slime her.

Not choosing Caroline Kennedy as Senator was the right course of action.

She is intensely private, generally uninvolved in politics, and shows all indications of being worse on the campaign trail than her cousin, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.

That being said, you did not have the guts to say that to her face, or to tell the people of New York the truth, which is pathetic.